Windows Phone App Review: glƏƏk!

glƏƏk! for Windows Phone

glƏƏk! is a Twitter client for your Windows Phone that has plenty of features and a bit of flair. The app brings all the Twitter goodness to your Windows Phones plus glƏƏk!s and pƏƏks.

When you first launch the app, you'll need to set up an account (sign in and authorize glƏƏk! to access your Twitter Account) and from there you can update your status, view the timeline, search for people, and enjoy live tile notifications for mentions and new tweets.

And that's only scratching the surface with glƏƏk!. If you're looking for a Twitter app for your Windows Phone, glƏƏk! should be on everyone's short list.

Are you a fearless tribesman, ready to lead the pack? We bet you are you animal, you. Microsoft and Nokia are looking to unleash a number of "code warriors" in 14 cities to pack a punch on the Marketplace by building, crafting and basically reaching their inner-zen. Cash, devices and prizes will be on-hand for those who attend so it'll be more than worthwhile.

What's this "code warrior" hackathon all about? In each city the two companies will be hosting a number of events that will see a number of developers building apps specifically targeting gaps in the Marketplace. Apps that should be in those gaps, and are present on other platforms, will be developed by participants.

Microsoft has made some pretty significant upgrades to SkyDrive, among them, one that adds capability to Windows Phone. The big announcement that Redmond is touting is that SkyDrive will now support Open Document format. While this is cool and all, what piques our interest more is the newly-added ability to post to Twitter using your Windows Phone and have the URL automatically shortened using the SDRV.MS suffix. This nifty little feature makes it easy to snap a quick pic and share with friends. It illustrates Microsoft's drive to deeply integrate Windows Phone with social media.

In addition to Open Document and Twitter support, the SkyDrive update also allows users to upload files up to 300MB using their web browser. The SkyDrive Team also reports that they "have some really big things coming soon." Hopefully that means some more stuff for Windows Phone!

Cyan Nokia Lumia 900 still out of stock at AT&T, Black models back in stock

The Nokia Lumia 900 is showing back in stock over at AT&T.com. Good news if you're looking for the black model. Not so good news if you're looking for the cyan model. It still showing as "temporarily out of stock".

Not sure if the newly in-stock black models have been updated to address the connectivity issues. Our guess is yes. And remember if you have purchased a Nokia Lumia 900 before April 21, 2012 you will be getting a $100 credit to your AT&T wireless bill. Additionally, if you don't want to bother with the update that launched last week, you have the option to exchange your current Lumia 900 for an updated Lumia 900.

What about the stock situation with alternatives you ask? AmazonWireless is still showing both the black and the black model in stock and the cyan model on backorder, usually shipping in 8 to 9 days. Both at the contractually discounted price of $49.99. Walmart.com showing both the black and cyan in stock with the asking price of $49.99 after contract discounts.

The local retail stores in Birmingham have what is described as limited inventory of the black Lumia 900 and there isn't a cyan model in town. If you've been able to find a hidden stash of Lumia 900's in your area, chime in below in the comments.

Windows Phone App Review: Turbo Camera

Here's a neat camera app for your Windows Phone. Turbo Camera brings a burst mode of sorts to your Windows Phone camera by taking pictures in the neighborhood of 14-16 frames per second. The app also has a timer feature and a delay for those times you don't need the high speed shutter. Turbo Camera has room for improvement but as is, it's a decent camera app for your Windows Phone.

Introducing FALCON: Fast App Launching with Context from Microsoft Research

Apps on Windows Phone boot up fairly quickly and the user only has but a few seconds to wait for the software to fully load, but what if the operating system itself could predict what app(s) you're likely to run that exact second? Cue FALCON, a project undertaken by Microsoft Research. The "Fast App Launching with Context" allows the faster execution of apps by preloading the software in memory (multitasking stack).

One of the researchers, Tingxin Yan, describes FALCON as:

A context-aware mobile app preloading component for mobile OS. Based on intensive data analysis of app usage across multiple mobile users, FALCON presents a decision engine which exploits temporal and spacial characters of user behavior to pre-load apps ahead of time, thereby improves the responsiveness of smartphones.

How FALCON would achieve this is by anticipating what apps the user is likely to launch using algorithms, and is part of a larger project called "Context Data OS (ConDOS)". Microsoft Research aims to improve the mobile experience with ConDOS by integrating context into the platform OS.

The team is set to present their research at the MobiSys 2012 conference this year. It'll be interesting to see such functionality built into Windows Phone to further improve responsiveness beyond competitor platforms.

Trapster heading to the Windows Phone Marketplace (Updated)

Trapster is finally making the move to Windows Phone. For those not familiar, Trapster first came onto the scene back in the Windows Mobile days (here's our review from way back when) and is a rather interesting app. The driving app has left the Beta Stage and is headed to the open Marketplace.

Trapster is a social network app for your Windows Phone designed to alert you of speed traps and other road hazards. Trapster relies on a network of over 15 million users who have reported a total of 5 million Traps to date. Keep in mind though, Trapster isn't intended to help you skirt the long arm of the law but rather drive more safely.

Along with reporting the Traps you see via the convenient Report button, Trapster will also have these features:

Speedometer that tracks your speed and changes colors from orange to red to indicate the amount you are driving over the set speed limit.

Sound Themes that includes Knight Rider, Yogi the Bear, and Austin Powers.

Support for six languages including English, French, German, Portuguese, Arabic and Spanish.

An NES emulator comes to Windows Phone and we put it through its paces

Game emulators are a lil' pastime around WPCentral. What can we say other than we like our old games as much as our new Xbox LIVE ones? We've covered Purple Cherry (Gameboy) and Blue Tomato (for you Sega fans) and now we're very happy to see Nudua's vNESLight come to the Windows Phone Marketplace for emulating games from the Nintendo Entertainment System (abbreviated as NES).

Version 1.0 of the emulator actually arrived two weeks ago after a two-month hold up by Microsoft and v1.1 is about to go live in a few days with some minor bug fixes. Version 1.0 now features Skydrive support, including recognition of ZIP and RAR files making ROM imports very easy. You can also save your games to Skydrive too in case you want to switch devices and the UI has been re-worked to be more "Metro".

Emulation of Nintendo games also now supports sounds from varying bitrate quality (8000, 22050 and 44100 Hz) as well as Auto-frame skip for older Gen 1 devices. But if you're like us with a Titan, Titan II, Focus S or Lumia device, you can easily run at no skips and max bitrate. Audio emulation is pretty good but there are distortions here and there, but since we know sound emulation is hard stuff, we're just glad it's here.

Other features include the ability to pin any game to your Start screen for 1-touch launching, a recently-played section, redesigned virtual controls and overall just a fluid UI. We still find Purple Cherry/Blue Tomato to have a little more pizzazz in terms of design but ultimately this is about the emulator and the developer, Nudua, has done a bang-up job there making this a must have for any serious NES fans out there.

More Tango ROMs headed for the Lumia 710 including Europe

Just yesterday we reported that China was destined for some Tango ROM goodness for the Nokia Lumia 710. This was verified by peeking in on Nokia's own servers where they like to toss up the ROMs before they're pushed out (yet another reason to like the company, we suppose).

Tonight, with a quick cache refresh of our NaviFirm software we were able to seen yet another Tango ROM show up, this time destined for Belgium operator Proximus. This ROM has a slightly different firmware as it's labeled 8773.12120 versus the 12111 we saw for China.

We haven't loaded this one up but we feeling a little safer about English being on board. The big question everyone is wondering is Will the bring tethering to the Lumia 710? Our hunch says yes, at least for those carriers who want it.

It was speculated that Nokia did not tie the battery-saver update in the Lumia 800 (and 710) to the tethering feature for fear it could limit adoption by carriers. By separating them, Nokia could get the important battery fix out to the most users while it separately delivers the tethering update.

We imagine we'll find out soon enough. At least it's a good sign that Nokia is pushing out these updates on a wide-scale and we imagine the Lumia 800 will follow soon too.

Wordament brings word tournaments to Xbox Live on Windows Phone on April 25

Lately we’ve been fortunate enough to receive release dates for new Xbox Live games a week or two in advance – including this week’s release, Monster Island. Naturally Windows Phone gamers are already anxious to know about next week’s new game, and we can now put those anxieties to rest. Microsoft Studios has officially announced that the Xbox Live version of Wordament launches on April 25. The game prematurely appeared on the Marketplace’s list of Xbox Live games last week, but was not Live-enabled.

Wordament is already available as an indie game. The gameplay involves trying to find as many words as possible from a field of 16 letters, all within a time limit. The hook? You’re competing against hundreds of others in real-time over the internet. Visually it’s quite plain, but the multiplayer/leaderboard aspect is compelling.

Head past the break for the full story and an update from the game's developer.

Forum member fig dropped his Lumia from waist high and the screen darn near 'sploded. If he has the AT&T insurance, the best he can hope for is spending $200 on the deductible. That is rather high but it's a lot better than paying full price for a new device, so let us hope he has the insurance!

Get the full story in our forums: cracked display.....what should I do? Let us know in the comments if you have insurance on your device and if you think the $200 deductible is, you know, too high?

Remember, the forums are more fun when you register, so sign up today.

Majority of new Lumia 900 converts are coming from Android or the iPhone

Nearly 60% of those switching to Windows Phone due to the Nokia Lumia 900 or HTC Titan II were former iOS and Android owners. Apple brand-loyalty? We think not.

We ran a poll the other day asking users if they switched to Windows Phone due to the Lumia 900 or Titan II, what OS were they coming from. And although the poll is still technically open, with 3,462 votes tallied so far we can discern a distinct pattern forming from the results.

The majority of users, nearly 60%, are coming from a combo of former Android and iPhone owners with it neatly divided at a close 30% each. Blackberry users are evidently still holding on with just 10% and a nice healthy 14% of adopters were coming from non-smartphones.

While our pals at Crackberry spun it as hope for Blackberry 10 users, we imagine a lot of folks jumped that ship last quarter to either the iPhone or Android, leaving the diehards (or still contract-bound) behind. Personally, we think RIM is DOA and look forward to a Microsoft acquisition at a rock bottom price (insert maniacal laughter).

The Android/iPhone results are interesting only because we're seeing what looks to be equal amount of folks taking up Windows Phone, leaving in the dust the notion that Apple has stronger brand loyalty than any other company.

One could also interpret the results as the Lumia 900 piquing interest from all segments of the smartphone market, represented in a roughly proportional manner. That's good news for Windows Phone as an OS and better news for Nokia who seem more than capable of garnering media attention on a wide scale. That is something the likes of Samsung and HTC have not been able to do in part because of their divided interest between Android and Windows Phone.

Update: To clarify, we purposefully left off previous Windows Phone users. The reason is because we were interested in only those who switched their OS due to the allure of the Lumia 900 (or Titan II). While we're sure a chunk of you were Windows Phone/Windows Mobile users, we wanted to look at the ratio of those who converted.

Microsoft challenges Italy with the Smoked by Windows Phone campaign

The Windows Phone team has taken the Smoked by Windows Phone challenge to Italy with a steady stream of contestants attempting to best the platform. Should they lose they would (as usual) have to hold up a sign and announce they've been smoked by a Windows Phone. But should they win, and this is the interesting part, they'd pocket a pair of headphones.

What's so interesting about the headphones? They're shaped like a giant phone.

Possibly the coolest prize from the challenge? The Windows Phone Italy team has been keeping everyone up-to-date with latest happenings on their Twitter account, paying particular attention to the charts which record the wins / loses. According to the photos published, Windows Phone appeared to have been holding its own successfully.

Windows Phone Game Review: Duudle

Duudle, a Draw Something styled game for Windows Phone

Duudle is a Draw Something type game for your Windows Phone where you have thirty seconds to doodle a picture describing a word. Your opponents then have to guess the word from the picture. Duudle is the product of the 2011 Nokia World Hackathon where forty developers had forty hours to create an app for a Nokia Phone. Duudle, the creation of Visiarc, was the winning app.

Duudle is a cross platform game to let you compete with your friends on Android devices and it is our understanding an iPhone version is in development. If you're a fan of the Draw Something/Pictionary type games, then you'll like what you see with Duudle.

Kinect Star Wars App now available and it'll surprise you

Kinect Star Wars for your Xbox 360 was released just a short while ago and yesterday the Kinect Star Wars app for your Windows Phone hit the Windows Phone Marketplace. And it's not what you think.

You may be thinking that the Kinect Star Wars app turns your Windows Phone into a light saber or monitors your progress in the Xbox 360 game. Nope.

The Kinect Star Wars app is a social network app that will pull feeds from your Facebook and Twitter accounts, giving your social networking a Star Wars feel. You also have a Kinect feed full of posts from your favorite Star Wars characters.

On each of the Twitter and Facebook pages, you have button controls to post, view your profile, search and view the Kinect Star Wars Xbox 360 website. The profile pages breaks down your Twitter account rather nicely with pages for your account details, your tweets, mentions, messages, favorites and following/followers lists. You do have live tile support to pin your profile to your Windows Phone Start Screen.

When viewing your Twitter or Facebook pages, the Kinect Star Wars app supports horizontal view but in its own special way. We won't spoil the surprise but if you're in the mood for Star Wars, the landscape view won't disappoint.

The Kinect Star Wars app is a free app that you can grab here at the Windows Phone Marketplace.